SAN CARLOS, CA - MAY 28: California republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner talks with reporters before speaking to supporters at the Hiller Aviation Museum May 28, 2010 in San Carlos, California. With less than a week before the California primary election, republican candidate for governor Steve Poizner continues to campaign as he trails his opponent Meg Whitman. less

SAN CARLOS, CA - MAY 28: California republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner talks with reporters before speaking to supporters at the Hiller Aviation Museum May 28, 2010 in San Carlos, California. ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

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Poll shows big lead for Whitman over Poizner

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Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman's recent $500,000-a-day spending spree in her quest to become California's governor appears to have paid off, with a new poll today showing that she holds a 2-to-1 lead over state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner heading into the Republican primary election on Tuesday.

Whitman leads Poizner by a seemingly insurmountable 51 to 25 percent, with 18 percent of voters undecided and another 6 percent preferring other candidates, according to the Field Poll of 511 Republican primary voters conducted May 27-June 2.

Other polls last month showed Poizner running as close as 9 points behind Whitman.

At an appearance Thursday in Pleasanton, the candidate seemed buoyed and made repeated references to a coming battle with Democrat Jerry Brown, the state's attorney general and former two-term governor who faces no serious competition in Tuesday's Democratic primary.

"I feel very good about where we are in the primary - and then we've got to turn around and take on Jerry Brown and the unions," she told about 50 supporters.

Regarding the primary race, she cautioned reporters later that "it's never over till it's over."

"I am running this race like I'm 10 points behind. I will be campaigning right through Tuesday," she said, adding that she has "about 20,000 volunteers in (the state's) 58 counties, making phone calls every single day and night - so we have pedal to the metal on this primary election."

Record spending

The dogfight between the Silicon Valley candidates - billionaire executive Whitman and Poizner, who made millions by helping to invent Global Positioning System technology for cell phones before he won statewide office - has turned the governor's race into a record-spending contest.

So far, they have spent a collective $110 million. Whitman has spent more than $80 million of that, most of it her own money.

The latest Field Poll shows that Whitman - whose presence on statewide television has been virtually nonstop for months and who has deluged Californians in recent weeks with mailings attacking Poizner - has persuaded many undecided voters to support her.

Whitman leads Poizner in every political, demographic and geographic group among likely Republican voters, the poll found, while three of every four voters believe that she has the best chance among the GOP candidates of beating Brown in November's general election.

"She has spent $80 million to secure the nomination - and (GOP) voters are convinced she'll spend whatever it takes to win in the general election," Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said. "That's a very persuasive argument ... (that) she has the money and she has the desire."

Poizner in a hole

DiCamillo said Poizner's quest for the nomination has been stymied for months by Whitman's onslaught of television, radio and mail attacks, which put him in a serious hole among GOP voters.

While Poizner battled back in recent weeks by attacking Whitman and arguing he was the "true conservative" in the race on issues such as immigration, the new poll confirms "a failure of the Poizner campaign to reach their target audiences," including Tea Party voters and the most conservative ranks of the GOP, DiCamillo said.

Among likely GOP voters, Whitman's image was considered favorable by 62 percent of those polled, compared with 24 percent who have a negative image of her. Poizner's voter ratings were split, with 40 percent giving him a favorable mark to 39 percent unfavorable, the poll showed.

Glimpse of the future

Whitman, in a glimpse of what may lie ahead after Tuesday's election, repeatedly told her backers in Pleasanton that she was the "only true fiscal conservative" in the race as she appeared to premiere what could be her coming lines of attack on Brown.

She defended her record campaign spending, which averaged $500,000 a day in recent weeks, telling reporters that "the investment is in getting our message out, getting people to know who I am."

"I'm the only candidate who has a very specific policy program for the state of California, which I hope Jerry Brown will soon come up with," she said. "Right now, he has not said one word about what he wants to do to turn California around."

The latest polling in the roller-coaster of GOP voter preferences has been nothing short of astonishing - with Whitman's 49-point lead over Poizner in a March Field Poll dwindling in recent weeks to single digits in several public and private polls as Poizner appeared to be closing strong.

According to campaign spending reports, Whitman spent $33 million in the last eight weeks while Poizner spent about $18 million and Brown spent $249,000.

More findings

The new Field Poll also found:

-- Whitman holds a 30-point lead over Poizner among Tea Party conservatives, and a 2-to- 1 lead among the majority of primary election voters who call themselves "strongly conservative."

-- More than half of all GOP primary voters who say they've either voted by mail or will vote at a precinct on Tuesday say they're supporting Whitman.

-- Whitman, who favors public funding of abortions, leads 2 to 1 among those who identify themselves as "born again Christians."

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

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